s h u i   l o n g
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FIELD NOTES

North America

16 August 2001—Rogue River, Oregon

the river is cool and crisp like springtime and the shadows from the trees speckle the shore but the river is golden with sun and the plants green and waving along the bottom and a lovely little cove by the rocks i can follow with my dives going upstream staying in the golden coolness....

then in the sun for my tea beneath the pine she says she's a she she's tall and she's old and her branches spiral and there's moss dripping off of them and the needles are so long and they waver in the wind and catch the sun and they shiver silver and i look up and all the pines here do this, shiver silvery needles in the sun like soft silk not brittle pine needles....

yet the river of commerce, of concrete and speeding steel, fills the air with its waves of 70 mph going somewhere doing something changing direction to a new destination traveling sojourning shipping carrying, and i wonder how do i work with this wonderful energy in the country, with the metropolitan noise coming in two streams up and down the interstate by the park? and yet even that noise fades in the needles shivering silvery in the sun which is warm but not so baking and i can sit and watch the ants and the spider, spiders visit me twice today and it is still only morning, do they know my next assignment? probably, and so i leave and take a winding quiet rode for a while so i can stay in that space with the crisp clean golden moving waters carrying spring and the memory of snowmelt as if it is real and not a distant echo of a year ago....i want to be a silvery shimmering needle waving in the wind washed by spring flowing through all seasons spring flowing to the ocean of peace....